


Here we lie against each other

by Esinde Nayrall (red_squared)



Series: The Scorching One [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: rs_small_gifts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-03-01 13:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13296330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_squared/pseuds/Esinde%20Nayrall
Summary: A lie-in isn't particularly satisfying when there's no-one to lie next to.





	Here we lie against each other

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LuminousGloom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuminousGloom/gifts).



> It’s been a while since the last time… Thanks and apologies to [](https://luminousgloom.dreamwidth.org/profile) **[luminousgloom](https://luminousgloom.dreamwidth.org/) ** respectively for the inspiring prompt and for making you wait so long, and massive thanks to [](https://mindabbles.dreamwidth.org/profile) **[mindabbles](https://mindabbles.dreamwidth.org/) ** for beta-ing (remaining errors are all my fault) and to the mods for the opportunity to play!
> 
> Written for [](https://small-gifts.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**small_gifts**](https://small-gifts.dreamwidth.org/) 2017 and originally posted [here](https://small-gifts.dreamwidth.org/244676.html).

_So here we lie against each other_  
_These four walls can never hold us_  
_We're looking for wide open spaces_  
_High above the kitchen_  
_And we're strangers here_  
_On our way to some other place_  
  
(“World where you live” from Crowded House’s “Crowded House”)  
  


~~*~~  


“How long have you been sitting here? Did you even try to sleep?”

“I had a nap,” Remus says.

“No,  _I_ had a nap,” James says. “ _You_  pretended to have one before sneaking out to sit by the Floo again.”

He doesn’t say anything in response to that, but shifts on the floor in front of the fire to get comfortable.

“Staying up isn’t going to bring Padfoot home any faster,” James says.

“I know,” Remus says. And he does know.

But he doesn’t want to point out that James has his reasoning the wrong way around.

He did try to sleep, but found that he couldn’t. Not while Sirius is still out in the field alone on a mission.

And especially not when it’s well past the hour Sirius was expected back.

Staying up won’t help to bring Sirius home, but Sirius coming home will help Remus to sleep restfully.

Added to which…

Well, simply put, it  _irritates_ him that Sirius has been ordered away from him for a full moon night.

He knows that he can’t expect his friends to drop everything for him every full moon night as they had when they were at school.

But Sirius is different. Sirius is  _his_. And Sirius’ gentle care of and single-minded devotion to him immediately before and after as well as during the full  _almost_ make the actual transformation itself bearable.

‘Looking forward to it’ probably isn’t quite the right way to describe it, but there is something to the quiet mornings after full moons that Remus has come to appreciate.

Not only does he have Sirius all to himself, but it is a Sirius who insists on waiting on him hand and foot.

A Sirius who draws on what he’s learning at St Mungo’s, thinking of increasingly innovative ways to make Remus more comfortable and less achy.

And a Sirius who never says ‘no’ to anything Remus asks for.

Of course, it can’t entirely make up for everything he has to go through on full moon night itself, but it makes things a little bit better.

Summer was best – warm nights when the moon rose late and set early.

The two of them had discovered that during the first, glorious summer of freedom after leaving Hogwarts, setting up their flat and relearning one another in their own space, away from bells, Slytherins, lessons, professors, and shared dormitories.

By contrast, winter moons were the worst.

The nights seemed to last forever and the two of them would be so worn out after a long night of running around that they’d stay in bed, wrapped around each other, until lunchtime.

Of course, even an average winter moon is a walk in the park compared to a full moon on one of the longest nights of the year, spent without Sirius to keep him company.

And apart from the time he spends transformed, James’ presence isn’t a patch on Sirius’.

Remus and James had spent most of the morning catching up on sleep – or at least, James had slept on their sofa while Remus had tried and failed to nap in his bed.

As night fell, they’d set up in front of the fire place, with James still camped out on the sofa, and Remus sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in a blanket.

“You know Padfoot would be here if he could.”

“Mmm,” is all Remus allows himself to say.

He doesn’t tell James that, actually, Sirius very well  _could_ be here, but has chosen not to be. He suspects Sirius and James have argued about this, as well as about Sirius going on the mission – a mission that brings him up against his family – without James to back him up.

“I’m feeling a lot better this way,” he lies, staring into the fire and willing it to flare green with an incoming Floo. He likes feeling useful, even if it’s extremely unlikely that any other Order other than Sirius might actually use their connection. “You don’t need to stay up with me,” Remus adds. “I know you must be tired.”

“What, and leave you here without back-up?” James asks. “What if the seven hundred different ways the Order can send messages to one another fail, one after another, and they’re forced to try the seven hundred and first alternative, which is to Floo through here?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Remus says. “That would probably explain why we haven’t had confirmation that he’s reported in since that last update last night.”

It had helped to hear Sirius’ voice ahead of the full moon.

It hasn’t helped that Sirius had promised he’d be home before moon set, waiting for Remus and James to return.

“Exactly. We’d better take care to pace ourselves,” James says, this time with a yawn. “Want another cocoa?”

“I’m all right,” he murmurs, setting his empty mug to one side.

He doesn’t  _want_ James or his hot chocolate or his well-meaning attempts to pretend that everything is fine – even acknowledging that last might be as much for James’ benefit as for Remus’.

He wants Sirius home and safe and then, selfishly, he just…  _wants_  Sirius.

Following one of the full moons during their first summer together after school, he and Sirius had woken up briefly before falling asleep again.

When they’d woken the second time…

That had been the day he’d rediscovered just how much he liked kissing Sirius.

Of course, when they’d first got together, they had snogged constantly, but they hadn’t done very much more. After they – after  _Sirius_ – had progressed to other activities, they tended to move into those pretty quickly and spend a lot less time on kissing.

Until that day, only a few weeks out of school, when Remus managed to persuade Sirius that he wasn’t kissing him as a lead up to anything – no, sadly Remus was far too tired for that – but kissing him just for the sake of it. For the soft, hot, desperate little sounds Sirius made as he shifted under Remus, and most definitely for the way he struggled not to beg for anything more. Not on the morning after the full when  _poor_  Remus was tired and sore and not really capable of moving about much.

“Hey.”

He doesn’t realise that James has come over to collect his cocoa mug until he feels James’ hand on his shoulder, causing him to look up.

“You can barely keep your eyes open,” James says. “Go to bed. I don’t want Padfoot jinxing me when he finds out I didn’t look after you properly and you’re too knackered to greet him properly.”

“Prongs, sometimes you can be so…”

“Insightful?”

“…needlessly graphic?”

James grins at him. “Look, at the very least… Is there any reason you can’t sit up on the sofa, instead of on the floor? Other than that the floor is closer to the Floo,” James adds, when Remus hesitates.

He snugs the blanket around himself more securely to preserve his modesty and then stands up, every muscle and joint screaming out in agony.

“Hard luck, mate,” James says sympathetically, helping Remus stiffly make his way to the sofa. “Hopefully there won’t be too many more moons without Padfoot here to heal you, or Wormtail to brew a restorative.”

“I’m all right,” he says, for what feels like the fiftieth time, letting go of James and settling himself onto the sofa with a heavy  _flump_.

James eyes him warily, but thankfully doesn’t make any remarks about how the journey from the floor to the sofa appears to have worn him out completely.

“Will you still be all right if I do a quick food run?”

It hits him that neither of them have eaten anything since before the full, and Remus hasn’t eaten anything since the day before that.

“I think I’d be a lot less all right if you didn’t, actually Prongs,” he says, just as his stomach rumbles. It would be nice to hit up the local fish and chip place, but he’s not up to walking there himself.

“What do you – ”

“Double everything.”

“Er… Right. I’ll just – ”

“With extra chips.”

“Sure,” James says, shrugging on a jacket while he comes to stand in front of the sofa. “In the meantime, do something for me?”

“Mmm?”

“Lie back on the sofa – yeah, like that – and close your eyes.”

“Prongs – ”

“And don’t open them again until I’m back.”

“I know what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work.”

“Humour me?”

Still. Even knowing it won’t work, there’s no reason he can’t lie back and rest his eyes.

 _Just for a little while_ …

 

~~*~~

 

After everything he’s been through the past day and a half, the last thing Sirius expects is to make it to the safety of his own flat and to then be nearly killed as his legs go out from under him when he Apparates onto something slippery.

“Must you come careening in like a rampaging erumpent?” James asks, managing to grab him before he hits his head on the counter. “I just got Moony off to sleep an hour ago, you know.”

“Why is there  _food_  all over my floor?” Sirius demands, taking a moment to spell curry and chips off his boots as he looks around the flat.

There are takeout bags piled high on the table, as well as on the chairs, the side tables, the kitchen counter and in odd spots along the floor.

“He said ‘double everything’,” James shrugs, indicating the piles of food. “I wasn’t good for very much else last night, but I could manage this at least.”

_What?_

“Did… How was the full?”

“How was the mission?” James shoots back.

James had been reluctant to let Sirius go on the mission alone, but they hadn’t had many alternatives. They couldn’t leave Remus just with Peter for the full, as there wasn’t much that Peter could do for him on his own when they were both transformed.

“Oh, Prongs and I had a lovely evening, thanks for asking,” Remus says, coming up from behind and wrapping Sirius into the blanket he’s wearing.

Sirius could kiss him for changing the subject.

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” James asks.

“Shouldn’t you be wearing pants?” Sirius suggests.

“You told me to shut my eyes until you got back and I’ll note a did quite a bit better than that,” Remus says. “And I’m not getting dressed up when I’m about to go to bed.

“Moony, Prongs doesn’t – ”

“ – get worked up about those sorts of things, and anyway, was just about to leave. Weren’t you, Prongs?”

James looks at Sirius for a long moment without saying anything, and then turns to Remus. “Yeah. It’s about twenty hours past my bed time, and I’m a growing boy who needs my rest.

“Prongs – ” he starts to say.

“Obviously the mission didn’t go smoothly, or you’d have been home this morning like you said you would. We’ll talk about it later. Take care, Moony.”

“Mmm. You too, Prongs,” Remus says, working his fingers under Sirius’ jacket as James Apparates home.

Remus’s fingers immediately home in on the spell burns in Sirius’ side, and press in.

“Ow, stop that!”

“Oh, hush you. Just be grateful I didn’t find that while James was still here.”

“Remus – ”

“I suppose we have Regulus to thank for this?”

“Regulus wasn’t the one who did that,” he snaps.

He turns around to face Remus who is giving the same gentle, pitying look he always does when Sirius defends his family.

“No. But was he the reason you let your guard down, so that someone else was able to do this?” Remus asks softly, still with an arm around Sirius and one palm pressed flat against his injury. “I think Prongs would have seen through that, if he’d been with you last night, don’t you think so?”

“And who would have been with  _you_ last night?” Sirius asks.

Remus mouth tightens briefly, before he says, “I don’t want you going on missions alone again.”

“I don’t want to fight about this now,” he says tiredly. Now that the adrenaline of the mission and the report to Dumbledore have worn off, the events of the past few days are all hitting him at once.

“Okay,” Remus says, a little  _too_ agreeably. “What would you like to fight about instead?”

“ _Moony_ ,” he laughs, leaning forward to press his forehead against Remus’. “How bad was the full? I mean you can’t… You’re not really this hungry, are you?”

“I just realised now I didn’t tell him  _where_ to get ‘double everything’ from, which is why he’s cleaned out most of the high street,” Remus says.

Sirius glances around the kitchen, still vaguely awed by the variety and amount of things James has bought and then conscientiously charmed to stay fresh.

“It’s under stasis,” he says. “It’ll keep. But you might not,” he adds, lifting his head away from Remus’ and taking in how tired he looks. “Let’s get you into bed.”

“Such romance,” Remus says with a tired laugh. He wraps the blanket around the both of them and pulls Sirius closer towards him. “I always knew that’s all you wanted from me.”

 

~~*~~

 

This time when he wakes, he’s curled around Sirius who is using him as a pillow.

He knows he isn’t dreaming, because that nasty spell burn is still there on Sirius’ side, and the Sirius that features in Remus’ dreams is flawless.

He reaches down to touch it again, noticing how much colder Sirius’ skin is around it.

“Morning,” Remus says, as Sirius opens his eyes under Remus’ investigation.

“Mmm,” Sirius murmurs, shifting further into him. “Isn’t it more like three in the afternoon?”

He hasn’t the faintest idea. Time always slows to a crawl for him before the full, and this time there was the added strain of Sirius being away.

“Okay, but what day?”

“Well now you’re really testing me,” Sirius laughs, rolling to lie on top of Remus before closing his eyes again.

“It’s morning somewhere,” Remus says, wrapping one arm around Sirius and pulling up the blanket with the other to keep them both covered. He works his hand under it and places his palm against Sirius’ injury again, hoping to warm him up.

“Are you saying we should get up?”

“Oh, well… You know.  _Should_.”

“It’s also the middle of the night somewhere,” Sirius says, nuzzling in against Remus before going still, evidently drifting back to sleep again.

Sirius is clearly in no condition to fuss over Remus the way he usually does after the full, but at least he’s  _here_  and safe, which means that Remus can actually benefit from a night’s – or a day’s – sleep.

Whatever time it is… Well, they’ve both had long, busy nights and have surely earned a lie in. Even if it  _is_  the next day.

He has Sirius all to himself, and the rest of the world can wait.

**Author's Note:**

> All comments and kudos are appreciated and treasured -- even (especially?) on a fic as old as this one!


End file.
